Climate Change

‘Design with Nature,’ 50 years later

Beginning on the Summer Solstice, the Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology at the Weitzman School is presenting Design With Nature Now, a multi-platform exploration of the legacy of visionary environmental planner and landscape architect Ian L. McHarg.

Penn Today Staff

Keeping rain out of the drain

From cisterns beneath Shoemaker Green to the green roof on New College House, special features of campus buildings and landscapes are helping manage stormwater to keep rain from the sewer lines, and scholars are using the infrastructure as a research opportunity.

Katherine Unger Baillie

A unique perspective on renewable energy

In a conversation with Rachel Kyte, the U.N. special representative and CEO of Sustainable Energy for All discusses how this energy sector has changed in the past decade and what happens when political will doesn’t match the science.

Michele W. Berger

Why central banks are taking on climate change

Climate change poses a significant financial risk to the global economy, and central bankers are concerned. One reason is that serious effects from climate change now look much closer to the horizon than recently thought, says Wharton’s Eric Orts, and central banks are responsible for financial stability.

Penn Today Staff

A sense of place on shifting shores

Roderick Coover, whose work merges cinema, science, and history, is the 2019 Mellon Artist-in-Residence for the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities (PPEH). His recent film “Toxi-City: A Climate Change Narrative” screened at PPEH’s “Teaching and Learning with Rising Waters” event.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Is climate change making the allergy season worse?

The timeline for seasonal hay fever has expanded in recent years. With the warmer temperatures, and a longer frost-free season, we may be exposed to more allergenic plants, leading to longer and more severe allergy seasons.

Penn Today Staff

Tackling climate change on all levels

At the Perry World House Global Shifts Colloquium, experts from around the world discussed what governments, and individuals, can do to avoid the ultimate catastrophe.

Gwyneth K. Shaw

Confronting inequities, sharing solutions

At the annual meeting of the Global Water Alliance, faculty, students, and practitioners shared solutions and challenges around the issues of water access, sanitation, and hygiene in the U.S. and around the world.

Katherine Unger Baillie

The future of urban waters

Students and faculty of the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities’ Liquid Histories course study the impact of rising sea levels from the banks of Philadelphia and Mumbai.

Penn Today Staff



Media Contact


In the News


Bloomberg

How the subtle but significant consequences of a hotter planet have already begun

R. Jisung Park of the School of Social Policy & Practice discusses his book “Slow Burn: The Hidden Costs of a Warming World.”

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WHYY (Philadelphia)

Climate policy under a second Trump presidency

Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences discusses how much a president can do or undo when it comes to environmental policy.

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Salon.com

Exxon CEO wants Trump to stay in Paris climate accord

Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences voices his concern about the possibility that the U.S. could become a petrostate.

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Associated Press

Amid Earth’s heat records, scientists report another bump upward in annual carbon emissions

Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences says that total carbon emissions including fossil fuel pollution and land use changes such as deforestation are basically flat because land emissions are declining.

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Associated Press

California air regulators approve changes to climate program that could raise gas prices

Danny Cullenward of the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the Weitzman School of Design says that many things being credited in California’s new climate program don’t help the climate.

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The Independent

Climate scientists fear Trump will destroy progress in his second term – and the outcome could be ‘grim’

Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences says that a second Trump term and the implementation of Project 2025 represents the end of climate action in this decade.

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